Thursday, June 19, 2014

In my article 'Neuroscience and the Reductionist Temptation', I point out that throughout the history of the modern world, a recurring temptation
among scientists and psychologists has been to posit reductionist
explanations for of what it means to be human.

For example, in the early twentieth century Freud had some remarkable insights about the unconscious, but Freudianism
becomes reductionist precisely when these insights are taken to be an
all-purpose explanation covering all of human behavior. There is more to
being human than simply the unconscious.

B.F. Skinner

In the mid twentieth century, B.F. Skinner had some insights
into the role our environment plays in conditioning human behavior.
Skinner and his followers went wrong when they assumed (or acted as if)
all human behavior could be explained in terms of environmental factors
(a theory known as behaviorism). There is more to being human than
simply behavior.

Throughout the twentieth century to the present, the
Christian counselor Jay Adams had some insights about the role
confrontation can play in a counseling context. Where he and his
followers went wrong was when they assumed this was the only way counseling should operate (a view known as “neuthetic counseling”, which I discuss here.) There is more to inner healing than the neo-behaviorism of the rigid neuthetic paradigm.

In the scientific realm, the temptation of reductionism has been equally pervasive. In the seventeenth-century, new machine metaphors began to emerge for describing the
world: the world began to be seen as a giant clock and God as the great
watch-maker. Descartes compared the coming of the swallows in spring to
clocks, while early English anatomists like William Harvey (1578–1657)
described the heart as a pump (a metaphor that Descartes extended to
both the brain and the human nervous system). All of this was well and
fine until the “Enlightenment” period came along and men began to take
these metaphors a little too seriously, assuming that all of reality
could be explained in purely mechanistic terms.

When Isaac Newton (1642-1727) succeeded in explaining the laws of
motion by which the universe operated, a number of thinkers assumed that
all of reality could be explained by these laws and that
Newton’s discoveries had somehow eliminated the need for the
supernatural or human free will. (J.R. Lucas discusses this in his book The Freedom of the Will.)

The temptation of reductionism is now apparent in the realm of brain
plasticity. The reason reductionism is so tempting is because brain
plasticity touches almost every aspect of how we behave as human beings,
as David Brooks showed in his fascinating book The Social Animal.
The science of brain plasticity really does explain a lot, but there
are non-material aspects of being human that it does not, and cannot,
ever touch upon.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Most Christians who hold a high view of the Bible would agree that
Scripture, in the original manuscripts and when interpreted according to
the intended sense, speaks truly in all that it affirms. Where
fundamentalists and sceptics alike usually go wrong is in failing to
properly think through the implications of “the intended sense.” If we
are to get at the intended meaning of Scripture, we must ask whether any
of the various Biblical writers were claiming the kind of technical
precision that both fundamentalists and enlightenment modernists have
come to associate with “truth.” If I am reading a legal document, any
slight anomaly can count as error because the author is claiming, either
implicitly or explicitly, a high degree of precision. But if you tell
me that my neighbor is middle aged when he is really 38, I would be a
fool to accuse you of falsehood. There is a qualitative difference in
what counts as error in a legal brief or in a poem, in a letter or in a
casual remark, in a road sign or a theological treatise. It follows that
veracity and falsehood cannot be predicted to a text independently of
careful considerations about authorial intent. Scripture is completely
trustworthy in so far as it makes good on its claims, and these claims
cannot be divorced from the intent of the original authors to
communicate certain truths to their original audience. (See John Frame’s
excellent discussion of this in Doctrine of the Word of God and also the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.)

This being the case, when presented with what seems to be a mistake
in the Bible, what we really need to ask is whether the author intended
the kind of technical precision that fundamentalism (in its crude
populist variety) has come to expect from Scripture. What we must guard
against is having a model of Biblical inerrancy that claims more for a
text (and from another perspective less) than what the authors themselves intended.

Monday, June 16, 2014

I was delighted to see today that the Colson Center recently re-ran my article 'Is Will-Power Good or Bad?' In that article I pointed out that one of the many admirable aspects of Eastern Orthodox Christianity is
that they have never lost the high premium that the Biblical writers
place on the connection between holiness and human effort.

Listen to the
words of Saint John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco (1896–1966). In a sermon about Saint Seraphim, the Holy Russian Orthodox hierarch was moved to remark that “Holiness is the fruit of a man’s efforts and the gift of the Holy
Spirit. Holiness is reached by him who wears a cross and wages warfare
in the name of Christ against the obstacles to holiness, to becoming
akin to Christ. These obstacles are sins, sinful habits, firmly rooted
in the soul. Struggle against them is the major work of a Christian…”

You can read more about why will-power can play an important role in sanctification by visiting my article 'Is Will-Power Good or Bad?'.

This book was written in 1992 by social scientists Robert T Michael, John H
Gagnon, and Edward O Laumann, after initiating a comprehensive study
into the sexual habits of Americans. The study involved a staff of 220
interviewers, stationed at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, who interviewed 3,432 respondents about all aspects of their sex lives.

The University of Chicago Chronicle
explained that “The study involved 90-minute, face-to-face interviews
with 3,432 randomly selected Americans ages 18 to 59. Of those selected,
80 percent, an extremely high percentage for response to any survey,
agreed to disclose the facts of their sexual lives.”

Although the researchers only interviewed Americans, it is likely
that their findings are generally applicable to the entire Western
world. Much of what the study
uncovered was predictable, while some things came as a surprise. The
greatest shock of all concerned the relationship between religious
belief and sexual pleasure.

Using objectively verifiable criteria—such as sexual responsiveness
and frequency of orgasm—the study found that the people who have the
most sex, the best sex and are the happiest about their sex lives are
monogamous, married, religious people.

While it may come as no surprise to find a direct correlation between
marriage and sexual pleasure, what did cause a number of raised
eyebrows was the connection between sexual pleasure and religion
(specifically, Christianity). Summarizing their findings on page 115 of
The Social Organization of Sexuality, the researchers wrote:

“women without religious affiliation were the least
likely to report always having an orgasm with their primary partner –
only one in five…. Protestant women who reported always having an orgasm
was the highest, at nearly one-third. In general, having a religious
affiliation was associated with higher rates or orgasm for women (27
percent of both Catholic and Type I Protestants reported always having
an orgasm with their primary partner.)”

The authors were forced to conclude: “religion may be independently associated with rates of female orgasm.

Just for the record, this was not a study commissioned or financed by
the religious right or by a church. It grew out of a 1987 proposal to
gather reliable data on adult sexuality to help better understand the
spread of AIDS. Conservative members of Congress opposed using tax-payer
money to fund the study, thus forcing it to be financed by private
benefactors. No one expected that among its conclusions would be the
fact that men and women who are religious, and who conform to
traditional sexual ethics, are the most sexually fulfilled.

The same year that The Social Organization of Sexuality was published, Edward Laumann joined with other authors to produce Sex in America: A Definitive Survey.
This was a more popular book explaining the findings of the Chicago
study in terms accessible to a non-specialist audience. Commenting on
the role of religion, the authors reiterated, “The women with no
religious affiliation were somewhat less likely to report that they
always had an orgasm, while the conservative Protestant women had the
highest rates….” The authors went on to comment specifically on how
these findings undermine traditional stereotypes:

“The association for women between religious affiliation
and orgasm may seem surprising because conservative religious women are
so often portrayed as sexually repressed.…And despite the popular image
of the straitlaced conservative Protestants, there is at least
circumstantial evidence that the image may be a myth at least as it
pertains to sexual intercourse.”

The Chicago study confirms what researchers have found in previous
less methodologically rigorous studies. For example, research conducted
by Redbook Magazine in 1970 also discovered a strong correlation between
religion and sexual pleasure. Redbook gave 18,349 women a
professionally prepared questionnaire about their sexual experiences.
The results were written up by Robert K. Levin and co-authored by
William H Masters and Virginia E Johnson for Redbook 145 in an article
titled ‘Sexual Pleasure: the Surprising Preferences in 100,000 Women.’
The survey discovered that “sexual satisfaction is related significantly
to religious belief. With notable consistency, the greater the
intensity of a woman’s religious convictions, the likelier she is to be
highly satisfied with the sexual pleasures of marriage.”

The Redbook survey found that 75% of women who described themselves
as ‘strongly religious’ were the most likely to regard their sex lives
as ‘good’ or ‘very good’, as opposed to only 68% of those who
identified as ‘moderately religious.’ This same study also discovered
that the least religious women were the least satisfied with the quality
and quantity of their intercourse. Reflecting on this trend, Robert J
Levin commented, “This tendency exists among women of all ages. No
matter what the age group…the pattern remains the same: Strongly
religious women are the most likely to describe their marital sex as
‘very good’.”

While the Redbook study discovered a correlation between religion and
enhanced sexual satisfaction for women of all ages, it found that
“strongly religious women (over 25) seem to be more responsive…[and] she
is more likely than the nonreligious woman to be orgasmic almost every
time she engages in sex.” In other words, it seems that the more
religious a woman is, the greater time she has in bed.

The findings of the Chicago study and Redbook magazine are not alone.
A 1940s Stanford University study and another study from the early 90s
also discovered that women who attend religious services scored higher
when it came to levels of sexual satisfaction.

Why is this? I have suggested four theories for why this is in an article I wrote last year for Salvo Magazine. One of these theories concerns modesty. I suggested that one reason why religious people, on average, are more sexually
fulfilled than others may stem from the connection between religiosity
and modesty. While many religious people dress just as immodestly as
many nonreligious people, religious ones tend at least to be more
conscious of their obligations in this area. But what is the connection
between modesty and sexual fulfillment? I'll answer first from the
female perspective and then the male.

Some women have told me that modesty
is important to them, not only because it helps men not to stumble, but
also because it helps them place a high value on their own sexuality.
They have told me that modest apparel affirms the true importance of a
woman's sexual identity, since it proclaims that her body is not a tame,
benign, and commonplace thing. Modesty affirms that our bodies in
general and our sexuality in particular are special, charged, even
enchanted, and too exciting to be put merely to common use. As Kathleen
van Schaijik suggested in a 1999 article, "If we revere something, we do
not hide it. Neither do we flaunt it in public. We cherish it; we pay
it homage; we approach it with dignity; we adorn it with beauty; we take
care that it is not misused."

In her book A Return to Modesty, Wendy Shalit argues that
modesty is the truly erotic option, since it makes the highest valuation
of a woman's sexual identity, affirming the sacredness of sexuality and
displaying a commitment to setting it apart and cherishing it. C. S.
Lewis put his finger on the same principle in That Hideous Strength: "when
a thing is enclosed, the mind does not willingly regard it as common."
To dress immodestly is ultimately to reduce our sexuality to something
commonplace, trivial, and humdrum.

Precisely for this reason, a modest woman significantly upgrades the
significance of what is happening when she undresses in front of her
husband. As Havelock Ellis observed (stumbling upon the truth for one of
the few times in his life), "without modesty we could not have, nor
rightly value at its true worth, that bold and pure candor which is at
once the final revelation of love and the seal of its sincerity."

Modesty also upgrades sexuality from the
male perspective. The anecdotal evidence clear shows that men whose
environment is saturated with immodest women (either because of the
company they keep or the images they view) are generally not oversexed,
as one might suppose, but just the opposite. In Denmark, where
pornography is unrestricted, men are often quoted as saying that sex has
become boring.

Cristina Odone observed in The Times that advertisers are
finding that sex just does not sell products like it once did. The
reason, she suggested, is that the advertisers have made sex so banal
that it doesn't entice us any longer. As one 16-year-old was quoted as
saying in 2004, "I'm so used to it, it makes me sick."

Frequent exposure to nudity tends to trivialize the human body,
emptying it of its implicit eroticism. As someone said to me last year,
when a man is exposed to too much flesh, it lowers the healthy
excitement he should feel when he looks upon the body of his wife
because (yawn) he sees that all the time. It therefore takes a higher
sexual charge, sometimes to point of extreme perversion, to match the
excitement that might otherwise be available in a normal sexual
encounter. Could it be that the rise of libido-enhancing drugs is
meeting a need created by the libido-squashing effects of pornography?

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

This Friday I will be helping to host a live Facebook event giving information about how to use essential oils to boost concentration and increase cognitive acuity. We're going to have some intriguing brain teasers and mental puzzles. Everyone is invited! To join, click on the link below:

Saturday, May 24, 2014

I came across an interesting sermon today that was preached by Lemuel Hedge in Warwick in 1772 . It is recounted by Hood in his book History of Music in New England and shows just how far people would go to try to apply the Regulative Principle.

"As to matters of God's worship, we have nothing to direct us therein but his Word... The Word of God is the only rule of conscience; and no man can say that he cant in conscience, comply with any proposed practice, unless he can see something in the Scriptures that forbids it. He may plead that his humour forbids it, but he cant plead conscience, unless he finds something in the Bible, that directs him in the case. Now the Bible nowhere tells us, that the psalm shall be read line by line when we sing; nor is anything there said, that implies any such thing.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

"Thomas Chalmers teaches us the importance of having bold and outrageous vision. He once remarked, “Regardless of how large, your vision is too small.” Chalmers lived by these words, always seeking ways to expand his vision. His vision was so large that it went beyond the confines of his own country and was international in its scope. He was concerned, not just with Scotland, but with Christendom. But although Chalmers’ vision for God’s kingdom was a vision for the whole world, it always started with the needs that lay closest to home. Unlike Rousseau, who neglected the needs of those closest to him in order to save the world, Chalmers’ love for mankind always manifested itself in his love for the person next door. The key to changing the world was to change the neighborhood." Saints and Scoundrels, page 206

Thursday, May 08, 2014

"A deep sense of radical autonomy has been intensified by the potent conjunction of consumerism with new communication media. By harnessing the impulse of radical autonomy, our digital media makes it possible for us to choose our own virtual communities instead of being attentive to the needs of those around us. As our social nourishment is increasingly dislocated from the real world of time and space, our social spaces come to be something we can approach and control as consumers. Moreover, as social interaction is increasingly being folded into digital technology, our relationships become an assemblage of online interactions disconnected from the larger context of people’s lives and shared experiences. Family relationships have been the primary casualty of these shifts. The 24/7 freneticism of non-stop stimulation via social media means that we have very little incentive to cultivate the dispositions necessary for attentive interaction with those closest to us, including those within our own families."